Aloha Amigo!

This is the second year (in fact, the sixth year of the project as a whole) of the museum’s three-year plan of “the Kanazawa Youth Dream Challenge Art Programme: Museum as Mediator”(*1). This year’s theme is “the existence of others,”─encounters and dialogues with others as well as one’s inner self through “seeing, hearing, feeling and expressing.” Musicians, who are interested in sound/music expression and relationships with the society and others, are invited to the museum to collaborate with young people, encourage them to experience the pleasure in expressing without being held back by stereotypical ideas. In order to do that, they need to use their five senses, despite the fact that museums are generally regarded as a place for visual arts. Now the museum faces the space-time axes of music expression.

Artist Federico HERRERO’s encounter with ukulele player SEKIGUCHI Kazuyuki has made it possible to create the space-time for expressing the world of fine arts fused with the world of sound/music. With the program in which the two worlds of sound/music and fine arts are blended as a long-term project, young people of Kanazawa can experience diversity and possibilities of communication appreciating the opportunity to think and create in their contemplation over one’s self/others and local area/the world. There emerges the world of sound, which is resonant with Federico Herrero’s comfortable and delicate world of painting, and young participants can learn how to express their emotions and impressions with sounds. Sounds and colors construct varied relationships between young people and community.

As a place to accompany the world of ukulele music, which expresses good rapport between nature and humans, Federico Herrero creates a space where various human relationships are stimulated.

Project participants led by young people implement various projects, which send out information to visitors as well as elementary and junior high school children together with artists and the museum. For this exhibition in particular, young people aged between 18 and 39 organized “Aloha Amigo Aina” (tentative title) playing the central role for the project. In addition, people aged 18 and above who are experienced in playing the ukulele formed “Aloha Amigo” to support young members’ activities.